The Derry full back has had few enough chances to showcase his great talents. Croke Park seems a fitting stage, writes Keith Duggan

The name echoes back to that epoch of Derry, to when Eamon Coleman had the cheeky saunter, the twinkling eyes and the smart ideas about how to win an All-Ireland and to when the tight necklace of football towns in south Derry produced men who made those places sound magnificent. Tohill came from Swatragh, Brolly from Dungiven, the Downeys and McGurks from Lavey. Not many people had been to Lavey, but it was easy to imagine it somewhere in the foothills of the Sperrins, the gemstone among those invincible football villages.

"The place doesn't even get a signpost," laughs Kevin McCloy, explaining that Lavey roughly begins at Baldy's bar - "a wee kitchen that was turned into a bar and is open when is should be open and sometimes when it shouldn't" - takes in the Cosy Corner Bar and church at Gulladuff, the pitch on the road to Magherafelt and the area of land that stretches on towards the unionist town of Castledawson.

We met at the Lavey club grounds. McCloy suggested we head up to his folks' house for a cup of tea and took off like the clappers in a red Audi in the direction of Upperlands. A few minutes' acquaintance with the area is sufficient to make you realise how fantastic it was this small pocket of land could produce a team to win the All-Ireland club championship in 1991 and provide the captain and three players for the immortal Derry team of 1993.

Although the club is steadfastly senior today, Lavey have not won a Derry senior championship since 1993 and McCloy is now the only county player from the parish. At a 10th-anniversary night for the All-Ireland club victory, he was flicking through a scrapbook and came across a Derry Journal photograph of a youngster standing in an emptying stand, gaping, dumbfounded that Lavey had won a national title. It took McCloy a few seconds to realise he was the boy in the picture.

"And sure enough, I remembered standing that day thinking that I wanted to play for Derry, the usual kind of dream I suppose. And then came the whole All-Ireland thing with Derry. Johnny McGurk and the Downey boys would have been like celebrities around here. It all seemed a bit unbelievable, that great game against Dublin and then winning the final against Cork and going into Maghera to see Henry with the cup. You wouldn't ever have seen a crowd like it."

That changes this afternoon. McCloy will act as Derry captain in the absence of Kevin McGuckian, leading the Oak Leaf men out into the thunderous, pale-blue arena of Croke Park, following in Henry Downey's steps some 14 years on. Naturally, it will be the biggest moment of his sporting life.

Although he has been the Derry full back for six years now, McCloy has a lower profile than his talent merits. That is mainly because Derry have played only in flashes this half-decade and the present team have learned the hard way, fringe artists through a period dominated by Armagh and Tyrone.

McCloy had never played a senior game for Lavey until his late teens but when he began to train for the footballers, he quickly caught the eye of Paddy Crozier, who was helping Séamus Downey train the club side then. Crozier mentioned McCloy's name to Danny Quinn, a county under-21 selector. It wasn't long before the wind carried it to Eamon Coleman, who was planning his second masterstroke with Derry. One night Coleman appeared on the field in Lavey with Damien Cassidy and the little general walked straight up to the startled McCloy.

"I only knew of him by reputation and I heard he was right arrogant. He just says, 'We need a full back.' I said, 'Hopefully I'll please ye.'"

Students of the Ulster game reckon McCloy sits comfortably among the best defenders in the province. The lion-hearted Francie Bellew of Armagh and the All Star Barry Owens of Fermanagh have won louder acclaim, but in what was considered an impoverished era for fullbacks, the public did not get to see enough of the Lavey man.

In his debut summer, he marked Pádraig Joyce in the All-Ireland semi-final of 2001. Derry were five points up with 10 minutes left when Matthew Clancy came tearing through for a goal.

"I thought if you held Joyce scoreless from play you would be winning matches like that. Clancy gave a one-two and came inside. I just could not believe it. The whole thing turned on a sixpence. We were 10 minutes away from winning it. There could have been an All-Ireland there that year.

"I still have dreams about that Galway game. We had a meeting the following week up in Redcastle . . . It came out that we didn't really believe we could beat Galway.

"A lot of the players were very young - myself and Paddy Bradley and Enda Muldoon were not long there. Gareth Doherty came in and was playing well. So for us to wipe the floor with Galway and be five points up with 10 minutes to go, you'd think we could have held on . . . but that loss knocked the stuffing out of us for a year."

That was as close as Coleman would come to recapturing the mischievous insolence and grandeur of 1993. Joyce was man of the match in the All-Ireland final, toying with the Meath defence. Derry disappeared but cropped up again in the 2004 All-Ireland semi-final after a strong qualifying run. That appearance was overshadowed by Fermanagh, the darlings of that summer, and Kerry were too strong.

Derry had acquired the reputation for being talented but unreliable, liable to vanish on the big day and too wrapped up in the intricacies of their own football landscape to mount a serious All-Ireland challenge. Last year seemed to confirm that, when they landed a huge punch against the All-Ireland champions Tyrone and followed it up by losing to Donegal. This year's disappointing defeat to Monaghan promised more of the same but the stealth and comfort with which they have advanced through the qualifier routes has substance.

They have ended the interest of Armagh, Mayo and Laois and yet have earned their place in the today's extravaganza without really showing their hand. After the defeat to Monaghan, McCloy was outside the ground in Clones when the draw was announced. Delighted Monaghan men tooted car horns in glee and rolled down windows to predict what Armagh would do to them.

"I just kept the head down. Paddy Bradley was beside me and he said, "Well, better to get a big one now than beat two or three small ones and then go out.' And funny, after the Laois game, I asked Paddy who he would like and he said straight away, 'The Dubs.'"

Today is the biggest occasion for Derry football in years. In the McCloy house, Kevin's mother was too busy baking to get ahead of herself for the weekend. She will travel to Dublin today but isn't sure how much of the match she will bear to watch.

Kevin's father, Michael, was a Lavey man but died when his son was just a few weeks old. His mother came from Loughguile in Antrim, and that probably fostered Kevin's interest in hurling. It was for the Derry hurlers he first came to prominence. He missed out on minor football because of a back injury and after recovering he gravitated toward the hurlers. Tom McGill had nurtured his interest, bringing him to see several Munster finals when he was a boy. He thought Thurles was a magic land.

"It was a completely different way of life. Hurling was life. The first time I went down I wore my Derry jersey and that got a few looks. A girl asked me to swap and gave me her Tipperary jersey. And Tipperary won that day too. Then that September I got to see Nicky English beating Antrim on his own, more or less, in the All-Ireland."

He made a felicitous break onto the county team just in time to play on the Derry side that won their first Ulster championship in 91 years. That was in 2000 and he played against Brian Whelahan in Croke Park when Derry lost by six points in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. McCloy was left half forward then but he had the versatility to play in the defence.

He was only 17 when Lavey met Dunloy in the 1997 Ulster club final that is today jokingly referred to as "the bloodbath". It was the third meeting between the teams and Lavey were three points down and pressing the champions when a couple of heavy challenges ignited a free-for-all. Substitutes and spectators rushed to join the action and an ugly and vicious spectacle was caught on camera, quickly gaining infamy as one of the more notorious GAA episodes.

"For weeks afterwards, it seemed to be on the UTV news every evening. It was one of those things. I was 17 at the time and tore knee ligaments in the semi-final so I wasn't playing but I think you can see me doing my best to fight away with crutches. Ah, the teams played after that with no trouble. It was just one of those bad incidents."

He might have been a Derry hurling lifer, like the Collins boys from Lavey, but for the intervention of Eamon Coleman. McCloy wanted to give the football a go and didn't have the time or the mindset of Geoffrey McGonigal, the chunky genius from Dungiven who played for both Derry teams. McCloy qualified as a civil engineer and often travelled distances to work. It was all he could do to dedicate himself to Lavey and Derry. The Downeys and the McGurks - six brothers played for the Lavey seniors - quit the game reluctantly and until the end set a ferocious standard. They all still live in the area and they train kids' teams. They will be in the crowd in Croke Park today.

"None of our boys apart from Seán Marty has played in a full house in Croke Park. I'm not even sure if he did," McCloy marvels.

They visited Croke Park last week but cannot fully know it until they are in the midst of it. Playing Dublin here is to enter the matrix of championship football.

"Once those Dublin boys hit the 21-yard line, they think of nothing else but goal."

And that is the popular image of how this afternoon will play out, the athletic Dubs pouring through the Derry defence, feeding from the adrenalin created by the great wall of sound. Back in the McCloy living-room, the evening sun still high and contented silence across the brackish hills, it is hard to imagine that noise and crowd .

"I suppose we will have about 12,000 people down and they will be shouting their best," McCloy shrugs. "But look, there's only one way to quieten the Dubs."

In the Cosy Corner, there has been plenty of reminiscing about the famous semi-final between Derry and Dublin of 14 years ago, a spellbinding affair decided when Johnny McGurk curled a left-footer over the bar.

McCloy has done his best to avoid the nostalgia. But he is glad to be representing the local tradition, set when Henry Downey led Derry into the mystic.

"If I do get to bring the Derry boys out, it will be some honour," murmurs Kevin McCloy. The team will be in dependable hands. Around Lavey, they have known that for years.